Week 2 Day 3 – Yikes!!

I didn’t really get a lot of work done, but not for the reasons I was expecting…

To start with, My anxiety was pretty high today, from the second I got in – and that sort of set the tone for the rest of the day.

Early in the day, I got some great advice about what I might want to focus on, while I’m here at Recurse Center, to help me get a job afterwards. I sort of wish I hadn’t done that, and I’m Really Glad I did. Asking for advice (just like pairing) is one of the best things you can do (especially at a place like Recurse Center). I got some very focused and helpful feedback. … it also kind of caused some cognitive dissonance for me as far as what to focus on, and how I should be organizing my efforts. One of the things I’m trying to balance is having a very big passion/interest in Game Development with the fact that it’s not a terribly realistic short-term career path for me (I don’t have any notable prior programming experience)

After panicking for a couple of hours, I was able to talk to a friend (and eventually some fellow RC folks), who helped me calm down and sort things out a bit better. I spent some time researching some of the new things I might focus on (Python Internals & Getting Comfortable with a Framework (Django or Flask????) & The Web Stack & how I would write a BitTorrent client). Thankfully the Web stack is something I’ve done before (and had been planning to do again. The main part of that I find overwhelming is actually going into the Python Internals. I feel like I’m still getting comfy with the language & like I need to pursue some more code before I’ll feel comfortable approaching the inner-workings. So I didn’t really dive particularly far into any of these topics, but I’ve found some good resources to peruse once I’m ready.

After that, I got started on one of the tutorials I found yesterday (https://qq.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html) – I’ve actually tried to go through that tutorial in my pre-RC days, and I’m already understanding it a LOT better than I did then … it’s still gonna take me at least a few days to really get and be comfy with. I’m excited for that.

Unfortunately, I missed Algorithms workshop b/c my Google Calendar was playing tricks on me, and then I skipped Design Patterns in order to get food … I really wish I’d been able to get to those next week.

Might have a pairing project next week on setting up a Virtual Environment in Windows 8. Might try and get a head start on that this weekend, if I have the time.